The editors write, “There’s no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don’t mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense, and global warming. […] But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there’s no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong.” They even say, “In retrospect, this magazine’s coverage of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That’s what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn’t get bogged down in details.”

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Over at the Scientific American blog we get to truly understand how uptight people in this country are. John Rennie posts:
I've come to learn that a fellow named McSpadden in Knoxville, Iowa, is trying to have copies of the February 2005 issue of Scie... Read More

Everyone remembers the widely-blogged Scientific American April Fool’s editorial, “We give up: We feel so ashamed.” The editorial claimed that Scientific American had given up on reporting on real science and agreed to let intel... Read More

Hey, don’t knock Sans Serif. It’s a very well-rounded place, and it’s geography lacks many of the harsh, jutting features that make other places difficult to travel through. It’s a nice place to go golfing.

Unconfirmed sources report that a State of Florida Appellate Court Judge is about to hand down a ruling that will require all Bibles in the state to carry a warning sticker. The proposed sticker reads: “Warning this book promotes the dogma of creationism. Because experts disagree about the scientific basis of creationism, it and the rest of the material in this book should not be taken on faith. One should approach this material with an open mind and study it critically.” The Florida religious community has greeted the news of the expected ruling with pleasure and is anxious to comply.
…
The White House refused to comment publicly on the matter as it is still before the judge, but the President is said to be pleased by the expected ruling. “The President, while himself a religious man, realizes that not everyone shares his beliefs.” Explained White House spokesman Ben Lion, anonymously on deep background. “America is a secular country and we need to be careful not to try and impose our beliefs on the heathen savages that we are forced share our county with.”
…

Scientific American used to be a good higher-level science magazine. If you can find copies of it from before about 1960 or so in a library, it’s worth reading. Since then, they’ve become a Popular Science lookalike.

I’m all for having them run ID articles - just so long as they get the same peer review that any other scientific article would get - or the same fair and balanced treatment that Bjorn Lomborg got.

1) You have not read the Scientific American editorial.
2) You have read the editorial and are incapable of distinguishing an April Fool’s joke from a serious column.
3) You were just kidding when you said you were serious.

Doctor Davison forgive me, I stand corrected. However, I have difficulty crediting that anyone with half a nickel’s worth of that sense which we call humor or any appreciation of irony whatsoever would have missed the fact that this editorial was an April Fool’s joke. The fact that, at the end, it is pretty much baldly stated to be one, coupled with the fact that it is a Scientific American tradition of some years’ standing would have tipped off most people. Certainly most Doctors, I should think.
Gary

I never even bothered to read it. I just assumed that even Scientific American would have come to its senses some day. Well if Scientific American hasn’t seen the light yet, it will within a very short period of time. There is now and never was a role for chance in either ontogeny or phylogeny. They have both been driven by endogenous predetermined information front-loaded into probably several separately created ancestral forms.

Referring to ontogeny and phylogeny, Leo Berg said it all:

“Neither in the one nor in the other is there any room for chance.”
Nomogenesis, page 134

He also suggested the following:

“Organisms have developed from tens of thousands of primary forms, i.e. polyphyletically.”
Nomogenesis, page 406

GWW
I used to get phone calls from adoring young women who would ask “Are you John Davidson the singer and actor? I used to answer, “No my dear, I am John Davison, whose primary enjoyment is harming young minds like yours with the truth about the biggest hoax in the history of humankind.

GWW
I used to get phone calls from adoring young women who would ask “Are you John Davidson the singer and actor? I used to answer, “No my dear, I am John Davison, whose primary enjoyment is harming young minds like yours with the truth about the biggest hoax in the history of humankind.

GWW
I used to get phone calls from adoring young women who would ask “Are you John Davidson the singer and actor? I used to answer, “No my dear, I am John Davison, whose primary enjoyment is harming young minds like yours with the truth about the biggest hoax in the history of humankind.

If anyone can direct me to other sites which specialize in refutations of the ID argument, I would be grateful.

Doug: check out the “evolution resources” listed on the “front page” of Panda’s Thumb. Especially the TalkOrigins archive and TalkDesign sites.

(I might add, parenthetically, that some of the, ahem, “intelligent design advocates” that come here to - I guess - present their case, unwittingly make for pretty compelling refutations of the ID position. But you probably figured that out.)

“The skulls of carnivorous marsupials and of true carnivores show an extremely surprising similarity in overall habitus and, in particular, in the unusual overspecialization of the upper pair of canines. The similarities in form are present even in such details as the structure of the large flange on the lower jaw, DESIGNED to guide and protect the upper canines.”
Schindewolf, page 261, (my emphasis)

The above with the accompanying figure but without the emphasis is from “A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis,” Rivista di Biologia, forthcoming.